Identity Crisis
by Teira
Summary: Set after EW. Can the pilots learn to live in this newfound peace or will wartime horrors consume them? And Duo is worried about how the "Perfect Soldier" Heero Yuy is coping after the war. For once would someone forget the war-torn world and remember the


Disclaimer: As much as I would love to, I do not own Gundam Wing. I am not making money from this (as if I could) so don't sue me! I just want to play with the G-boys awhile. Is that so wrong? 

Warning: No pairings! :::Collective Gasp::: I'm making this a PG-13 rating mainly because of the hinting at suicide. 

Identity Crisis 

"Down some cold field in a world unspoken

The young men are walking together, slim and tall,

And though they laugh to one another, silence is not broken;

There is no sound however clear they call.

They are speaking together of what they loved in vain here,

But the air is too thin to carry the thing they say.

They were young and golden, but they came on pain here,

And their youth is age now, their gold is grey.

Yet their hearts are not changed, and they cry to one another,

'What have they done with the lives we laid aside?

Are they young with are youth, gold with our gold, my brother?

Do they smile in the face of death, because we died?'

Down some cold field in a world uncharted

The young seek each other with questioning eyes.

They question each other, the young, the golden-hearted,

Of the world that they were robbed of in their quiet paradise."

Humbert Wolfe

            The light in the small bar was dim and the stale smell of alcohol filled the air. Men jubilant and men sorrowful filled themselves with the amber liquor they so loved. I sit there drinking my 8th, or is it 18th, beer. The glasses keep moving and I can't count them.

"Hey kid, get out of my seat!" a gruff voice barks out behind me. I turn to send him my glare and the bar is gone. Red lights flash around me and sirens wail. I can hear the soft booms of the bombs I'd detonated moments before. I stand and turn toward my assailant. The man smirks and raises his hand and I react. 

I lunge forward and follow with a quick kick to knock the gun away and my world changes again. It's just a man and he does not wear a uniform. I must be losing it. I shake my head vigorously to this image. I should've been paying attention and with little time I must counterattack for the man has decided on revenge for my kick. He growls gutturally and once again I am facing an Oz soldier. We grapple. 

I should've been watching my back. The OZ soldier's friend is a coward. I'm stabbed before I have time to turn, time to save myself.  I feel the pain run up my back and still I fight on. I've lost my gun somewhere. I have no weapon. I feel the red liquid of my lifeblood run streaming down my back. There are too many. Dishonorably they gain up on me. But that is o.k. Because I fought like the soldier I am and those bombs exploding are my work. Heero, "perfect soldier," Yuy, always completes his mission. I am the perfect soldier.

Mission accomplished.

I fall onto the hard metal floor of the OZ base. My vision begins to blur and now the base is gone. I lay in my own blood and old spilt beer on the floor of a seedy bar. My vision is going black and I can't see anything. I know I am dying. I died as a soldier. I wish I had known peace.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ** * * * * * * ** * * * * * * ** * * * * * ** *

            "Heero!" I shout as I bolt upright from my dream. I cover my face with my hands and take deep breaths to try to still my rapidly beating heart. I gently twist my braid in my hands and stare at it. Strands have come loose from tossing and turning in my sleep. My unformed fears have made themselves known in this dream of my friend's death/suicide. I think of Heero. I think of war.

            War is pain. There is no light you can shine it under to make it be anything but. A good day is when none of your friends die. War in thought is terrible but in actuality is worse. The gunfire, bomb explosions, the metallic scent of blood, the screams that ring hollowly in your head, quickly disposes all war's glory. No longer will you be the green youth who has gone off to fight for his country, in times the cause almost becomes nothing. You come back old, haunted eyes so misplaced in the face of youth. That is the face of war, the real face. Empty eyes, haunted eyes on the face of a child.  But nobody knows that face. They turn away and worship their veterans. The victorious look over the haunted faces of the vanquished. They only see a beaten foe, soldiers they had fought in the war. What about the children and the ones that had stayed behind? Don't they see them? 

Some think war is hatred but really war melts away hatred. When WWII officially ended, soldiers in the field rushed from their trenches to hug and be merry with men they'd been shooting only moments before, much to the dismay of their captains. Forget the captains and the world leaders though. They only make the war, it's the soldiers that really fight them, suffer for it. 

You look at me now and ask in a somewhat sarcastic tone, "You speak from experience I take it?" I answer back, "I do." For I am Shinigami, the god of death. I am Duo Maxwell and I grew up too soon. 

All of us, the gundam pilots, didn't have a chance. Our identities have been warped. We're too old too soon and doomed to live life on the outside. We've done vampires one up. They have a role, the living dead. Us? The gundam pilots? Our roles disappeared with the war.

A person needs a time to grow, to find who they are. Their own identity shall we say. The problem with us pilots is our identities are war itself. We can only associate with war. 

Heero seems to be the worst off. Odin Lowe introduced him into the thick of the war when he was very young. He has been trained and retrained to be nothing but a soldier, a mercenary, an assassin. As the "perfect soldier" he knows little but war. His life revolves around infiltration and the warfront. For Heero the end of war turned out to be the end of purpose, the ultimate shellshock. He wanted peace, still does, but he doesn't know how to live in it. I worry about him. When I see him now it is like he is disappearing. The spirit is leaving and I'm afraid the substance will follow. He sees conspiracy where there is none. I think he wants to bring back war. I'm afraid he'll bring back Wing. Or die. 

Trowa is lost, stuck in time. His very name comes from the war, a memory of what war was. The name that he's taken is from an ex-top war figure. Before that he was nanashi, "no name". He remembers nothing but that of being a soldier. Trowa doesn't remember toy guns and snow on Christmas but instead real weapons of mass destruction and soldiers living in the harsh snow take up most of his memory banks. He's lost but he has the circus. I'm glad he does, he needs it.

Quatre is doing better than most of us. He has the whole Winner Corporation to take his mind off things. But he still wakes up from nightmares of people screaming and suits exploding. He screams in his sleep. I can no longer stay over at his house with him anymore, his screams are enough to rake claw marks down your soul. We end up crying together, him and I. He has opened more programs to help those in need after the war I can't even count them and no matter how many times he washes his hands or how many donations he makes to help those in need from the after effects of war, he says his hands will never be clean. He asks me with pleading tear-filled blue eyes on why he can't wash away the blood. It hurts my heart that I can give him no answer. 

Wufei has buried himself in books. He wishes to lose himself in knowledge. But it isn't from the battles he fought that he hides, but his other past. He can't bury his life before battle. He can't bury his wife though her death is the very thing that pitched him into battle. He fought the war for his Nataku. He lost his real self when becoming Nataku, justice itself. Nataku only knew war and he can't find himself in his books. He no longer remembers what it is like to be himself. I hope he can find himself with the preventers. Maybe Sally Po can watch him.  

Myself? I'm more lost than ever. Shinigami stirs restlessly in me and I can't escape. All I've ever known was war and death. My parents were killed by it, Solo, the Maxwell church destroyed by soldiers and myself claiming Deathscythe for my own. I'd joined the war because I had nothing to do and maybe for my own twisted sense of justice. I was bitter about the world that all those I loved died. Deep down, though I don't want to admit it, I wanted to make some other people hurt too or maybe I was really beginning to believe more and more that I was Shinigami. Even today the politics of war and maneuvers run through my head. I still look over my shoulder for invisible enemies. My identity, like the other pilots, is one of the warrior. I work harder now with Hilde to get my mind off things. She has been a great friend. 

Through the war we thought surviving war the hardest trick, but no, the real trick is living when you've grown up as a soldier and that's all you've ever known. We didn't ask to be heroes. We were children that were never allowed the chance to be young. We lost the chance to find ourselves and don't know how to live in this peace. We're lost, in a bucket of toy soldiers that society put in a dusty corner in their closet now that war is over and we're forgotten. Without war toy soldiers aren't needed and we are without a role. Normal people fear war. We fear peace.

I know I have to go see Heero. My dream was more prophetic than I wished it to be. My friend is lost. He doesn't know he is lost. He doesn't know that the war is over. I sigh to myself and make my way up the driveway to the small shack my friend is calling home. I rap lightly on the door, quietly. I'm not surprised that a minute later the door opens. Heero always was alert, even to the slightest sounds. 

I stare at him. He's still the same. My God, he's still the same. From the tank top to his ruffled brown hair. He stands straight and rigid. His eyes as blank and those of the "perfect soldier."  He's still a soldier. I notice the gun that hangs loosely in his hand. The gun that he had taken out, not sure if I were an enemy or ally at his front door. He still can't let go; he still cannot stop being the soldier he was raised to be. Everything that I had resolved to say dissolved as I looked at him. I throw myself at him, wrapping my arms around him tightly, crying into his chest. Anguished sobs wrack my body.

"Heero, we're not soldiers anymore! We're not!"  

Authoress' note: I think Heero is the most lost. At the end of EW every pilot was shown doing something, had some role in society which I have mentioned in my story. Heero is shown walking though. You don't know where he is going or if he even has anywhere to go. He is never shown with any role than that of a soldier in the war. My poor Hee-chan!


End file.
